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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The loss on the side of Alexander is said to have been very small. Twenty-five of the companion-cavalry, belonging to the division under Ptolemy and Amyntas, were slain in the first unsuccessful attempt to pass the river. Of the other cavalry, sixty in all were slain; of the infantry, thirty. This is given to us as the entire loss on the side of Alexander. It is only the number of killed; that of the wounded is not stated; but assuming it to be ten times the number of killed, the total of both together will be 1265. If this be correct, the resistance of the Persian cavalry, except near that point where Alexander himself and the Persian chiefs came into conflict, cannot have been either serious or long protracted. But when we add farther the contest with the infantry, the smallness of the total assigned for Macedonian killed and wounded will appear still more surprising. The total of the Persian infantry is stated at nearly twenty thousand, most part of them Greek mercenaries. Of these only two thousand were made prisoners; nearly all the rest (according to Arrian) were slain. Now the Greek mercenaries were well armed, and not likely to let themselves be slain with impunity; moreover Plutarch expressly affirms that they resisted with desperate valour, and that most of the Macedonian loss was incurred in the conflict against them. It is not easy therefore to comprehend how the total number of slain can be brought within the statement of Arrian.
After the victory, Alexander manifested the greatest solicitude for his wounded soldiers, whom he visited and consoled in person. Of the twenty-five companions slain, he caused brazen statues, by Lysippus, to be erected at Dium in Macedonia, where they were still standing in the time of Arrian. To the surviving relatives of all the slain he also granted immunity from taxation and from personal service. The dead bodies were honourably buried, those of the enemy as well as of his own soldiers. The two thousand Greeks in the Persian service who had become his prisoners, were put in chains, and transported to Macedonia there to work as slaves; to which treatment Alexander condemned them on the ground that they had taken arms on behalf of the foreigner against Greece, in contravention of the general vote passed by the synod at Corinth. At the same time, he sent to Athens three hundred panoplies selected from the spoil, to be dedicated to Athene in the Acropolis with this inscription, “Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks except the Lacedæmonians (present these offerings), out of the spoils of the foreigners inhabiting Asia.” Though the vote to which Alexander appealed represented no existing Grecian aspiration, and granted only a sanction which could not be safely refused, yet he found satisfaction in clothing his own self-aggrandising impulse under the name of a supposed Panhellenic purpose: which was at the same time useful as strengthening his hold upon the Greeks, who were the only persons competent, either as officers or soldiers, to uphold the Persian empire against him. His conquests were the extinction of genuine Hellenism, though they diffused an exterior varnish of it, and especially the Greek language, over much of the oriental world. “True Grecian interests,” says Grote, “lay more on the side of Darius than of Alexander.”
EFFECTS OF ALEXANDER’S VICTORY
No victory could be more decisive or terror-striking than that of Alexander. There remained no force in the field to oppose him. The impression made by so great a public catastrophe was enhanced by two accompanying circumstances: first, by the number of Persian grandees who perished, realising almost the wailings of Atossa, Xerxes, and the Chorus, in the Persæ of Æschylus, after the battle of Salamis; next, by the chivalrous and successful prowess of Alexander himself, who, emulating the Homeric Achilles, not only rushed foremost into the mêlée, but killed two of these grandees with his own hand. Such exploits, impressive even when we read of them now, must at the moment when they occurred have acted most powerfully upon the imagination of the contemporaries.f
Battle-field of Issus
CHAPTER LII. ISSUS AND TYRE
Arsites had fled after the battle into Phrygia; but there, it was said, overpowered by grief and shame by the disaster, which he attributed to his own counsels, laid violent hands on himself. Alexander bestowed his satrapy on Calas; encouraged the barbarians, who had fled to the mountains, to return to their homes; and ordered the tribute to remain on its ancient footing. Parmenion was detached to take possession of the satrap’s residence Dascylium. The king himself, bending his march southward, advanced towards Sardis. The news of his victory produced such an effect in the capital of Lydia, that when he had come within eight or nine miles of it, Mithrines, the commander of the garrison, accompanied by the principal inhabitants, met him, with a peaceable surrender of the city, the citadel, and the treasure. He retained Mithrines on an honourable footing near his person, and committed the command of the citadel to Pausanias, an officer of his guard. To conciliate the Lydians, he restored their ancient laws; that is, abolished the restraints which the policy of the Persian government had imposed on them, when it crushed their rebellion after the first conquest: while, perhaps to make them more familiar with Greek usages, he ordered a temple to be built on the citadel to Olympian Zeus. A body of cavalry and light troops and the Argive contingent were left as a garrison.
Four days after, Alexander arrived at Ephesus. There too, as soon as the tidings of the battle arrived, a body of mercenaries who had been stationed there by Memnon took ship with Amyntas, son of Antiochus, a Macedonian emigrant, who had fled his country to avoid the effects of the king’s displeasure, or because he was conscious of a share in some of the plots formed against him. Ephesus was divided between an oligarchical and a democratical faction, which seem nearly to have balanced each other. The oligarchy had been sustained by the power of Persia: their adversaries therefore looked forward with hope to the impending invasion, and had probably received promises of support from Philip. Violent tumults had taken place, in which the oligarchs, aided by Memnon’s troops, had prevailed, forced many of their opponents to leave the city, threw down a statue of Philip which stood in the temple, committed other acts of sacrilege there, and broke open the tomb of Heropythes, a great popular leader, who had been buried in the market place. A complete reaction ensued on Alexander’s arrivaclass="underline" democracy was formally restored, the exiles returned to their homes, and the triumphant party became eager for revenge on their vanquished oppressors. Alexander interfered to prevent bloodshed, and forbade any proceedings to be instituted for the punishment of political offences. The city was permitted to expend the tribute which it had before paid to the Persian government on its new temple, which was not yet finished. At a later period he offered to defray the whole expense of the building, on condition that his own name should be inscribed on it as its founder—an offer which the Ephesians declined with ingenious flattery. Before his departure he celebrated a great sacrifice to the goddess, with a solemn procession of his whole army in battle array. By like measures, especially by the establishment of democracy, and remission of tribute, he endeavoured to gain the good-will of all the other Greek cities on the coast, which was of great importance to him at this juncture, while the naval power of Persia was still formidable.
In the meanwhile he had received offers of submission from Magnesia and Tralles, in the vale of the Mæander, and had sent Parmenion forward to take possession of them. He had also at first reason to hope that Miletus would be as quietly surrendered to him; for Hegesistratus, who commanded the garrison, had made him like offers by letter. But the approach of a Persian armament, which was on its way from Phœnicia, encouraged Hegesistratus to change his intention, and defend his post. Nicanor, however, Alexander’s admiral, got the start of the barbarians, and arrived with his fleet of 160 galleys at Lade, before they appeared: and Alexander forthwith secured the island, which commanded the entrance to the port of Miletus, with a detachment of four thousand men. The Persians, finding themselves shut out, came to anchor at Mycale. Their fleet amounted to four hundred sail. Yet, notwithstanding this great inequality, Parmenion advised the king to hazard a sea-fight. A victory, he thought, would be attended with the greatest advantages, while defeat would not make the state of his naval affairs much worse—since, as it was, the enemy were masters of the sea. An omen too, which he had observed, confirmed him in his opinion. Alexander pointed out to him that it might be otherwise interpreted, and that his arguments were not sounder than his rules of divination. The Macedonian fleet was inferior, not only in number, but in nautical skill and training to the Phœnician and Cyprian galleys. It would be mere foolhardiness to seek a battle under such disadvantages; and a defeat, far from leaving him in nearly the same condition as he now stood in, might involve consequences no less important and disastrous than a general insurrection in Greece. The eagle which had been seen to perch on the beach behind the royal galley, signified that he was destined to overcome the Persian navy by his operations on land.